Avenatti Takes to Twitter to Get Meeting With Separated Children

(Bloomberg) -- It took a tweet, but it got California lawyer Michael Avenatti into a New York foster-care facility to see two children who were forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S. border.

The Cayuga Center in East Harlem initially refused to let Avenatti meet with the two sisters -- aged 5 and 9 -- who are among hundreds of children at the facility who were separated from their family at the border, the lawyer said. Police were called to make him leave, he said.

In a tweet to his 617,000 followers, Avenatti called the situation an "absolute disgrace" and argued that he had a legal right to the pre-scheduled meeting with the girls who fled Honduras with their mother about five weeks ago.

"We were forced to leave," Avenatti said in a follow-up email. "Within 20 min. of me sending my tweet, they changed their mind and called me. We then met with the girls."

Avenatti, better known as the attorney for adult-film star Stephanie Clifford in her suit against President Donald Trump, has said he’s representing about 70 undocumented immigrant children out of about 3,000 who’ve been separated from their families under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the border.

A call to the Cayuga Center after hours wasn’t immediately returned.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider

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